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Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Bottling Turbo Yeast "Rum"

"Rum" Revisited

A while back I set out to test the fermentation limits of the cider yeast from Homebrew West. I mixed up a mysterious beverage of unrefined sugar, yeast nutrient, and water. My Turbo Yeast wasn't up to the challenge- possibly due to age, possibly to not making a starter. I use quotes around the word, "rum" because this is not distilled. Home distilling is illegal in Ireland (and in many other countries), so it's important to note that here.

Either way, the cider yeast kicked in and fermented like mad. A full month later, I approached it with the hydrometer for a test. To my delight, the hydrometer sank low, WAY low. This means that the cider yeast did a killer job of fermenting down this wash. Either that or the turbo yeast finally kicked in and finished it off with the cider yeast. Impossible to be scientifically sure, but hey, this is homebrewing, not science! Time to bottle!

Pretty Standard Bottling

Bottling this was a cinch. I only had a liter of volume, and I needed (of course) to have a small... ahem... sample while I was working. My total yield would be small, but powerful. I readied two 500mL bottles, knowing I would only need about one and half.

Ready to Bottle

I poured out one glass, one clear bottle, and one half cloudy bottle. No worries on the cloudy bottle, I stuck it in the fridge to settle out and I'll drink that one when it clears out. The glass, by the way, is a whiskey glass I found on the street.

Finished Bottling

How'd it Taste?

Well, in a word, strong. It fermented down surprisingly well. It had a strong smell and quite a sharp taste. A lot of the reported "cidery" taste was up front. These flavors are usually attributed to using too much table sugar. Welp, guess that's what happens when the drink is all sugar.

This won't be something to drink by the pint, let's just say. I think my original plan of mixing it with cola will best suit this particular experiment.